URBAN PLANNING

How can cities as drivers and victims of climate change cope with its risks and become custodians of a livable environment? Chennai, having already been directly affected by the effects of climate change, especially needs to find answers to this question. EYES ON THE CANAL, an initiative focused on reimagining one of Chennai´s most important spatial and functional elements, the Buckingham Canal, has now floated an open call for ideas to raise awareness on the issue of climate change in urban areas and especially to propose visionary, but also feasible, solutions to improve the current situation alongside the canal.  How…

With a long coastline, Chennaiites have the luxury of a sand track for their sporting activities, especially athletics. The sand track is the cheapest facility for many athletes, including the youth from fishermen communities, who can be seen practising on beach roads. The 210 playgrounds maintained by the Greater Chennai Corporation also facilitate daily practice for the potential athletes. But can we really provide the kind of infrastructure needed for athletes to compete and shine on the global arena ? Perhaps not. While the existing facilities are good for athletes in the early training phases, mastering the sport requires well-equipped…

With Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy’s maiden budget reviving the pod taxi for five stretches in Bengaluru at a cost of Rs 1445 crores, several eyebrows have been raised in questions over what makes the government favour it as a possible solution to the city’s traffic nightmare. Interestingly, the idea of pod taxis isn't as new as one would imagine. Indian cities have seen similar experiments before: The Chembur - Wadala - Maharaja Chowk monorail project, the airport feeder metro built by the Delhi Metro as a PPP project which was subsequently converted into the orange line. Both have had their…

Travelling within Bengaluru City has become a chronic nightmare for all its citizens. Even as people grapple with never-ending traffic jams, the government has come up with various ideas to solve the issue, including the much debated elevated flyover and the pod taxi project. But are decision makers losing sight of the broader context and framework within which the traffic situation must be viewed? Is there a deep enough understanding of the nuances that need to be considered for the gridlock to be broken and the efficiency of solutions multiplied? Talking to Citizen Matters, Professor Ashish Verma deconstructs the overall…

The incomplete pillars on Chennai's Inner Ring Road are a stark reminder of one of the tall claims of the state and central government about the extended Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS). Twenty three years after Phase-1 of Parakkum Rail between Chennai Beach and Mylapore was inaugurated in 1995, construction over a 1.5-Km stretch from Adambakkam to Puzhuthivakkam on the Inner Ring Road remains suspended. The 20-kilometre long MRTS line from Chennai Beach to Velachery includes prominent and populated localities that are not serviced by the older suburban railway network. However, the MRTS  has not been utilised to its maximum potential…

Urban infrastructure projects announced by various government departments have hit a stumbling block in Chennai, since the expiry of the last city council in October 2016. A handful of ideas announced by the Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) were languishing at varying stages of implementation, several of them still at a very preliminary stage. Several other projects taken up by the highways department have also been in suspension.   We inquired into three such significant projects in Chennai and the problems that impede completion. Pallavaram flyover skips deadline When the highways department commenced the construction works of the three lane unidirectional…

The Union government launched the Smart Cities programme on June 25, 2015 with the objective to "promote sustainable and inclusive cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and application of ‘Smart’ Solutions". Chennai was one of the 20 cities selected in Round 1 of the smart cities mission in January 2016. Chennai's smart city projects are funded by a Rs 500-crore allocation from the Centre and an additional Rs 500 crore from the state. Chennai Smart City Projects But for all the hype, the Corporation of Chennai…

For my second blog, I would like to write about retro reflective sign boards.  The local administration during the erstwhile DMK regime had, in the final months of their tenure, decided to change the existing concrete street signs to  retro-reflective stainless steel sign boards. In the first phase in 2011,  over 1000 important roads across Chennai  sported these boards. Months later, there was a change in the administration, when the AIADMK came to power. They suspected corruption in the  retro reflective sign boards project, and decided to paint the sign boards on the walls of houses as illustrated in the…

What is common among urban waterways, economics and culture? All three are intertwined, and can complement as well as transform each other. But they can also lead to weakening urban systems if they are poorly planned, as the Indian port city of Kochi has shown. However, the city has seen recent attempts at overall upgrading of systems and researchers from the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) emphasise the role that the city’s waterways can play in this makeover effort. Kochi’s crisscrossing canals and rivers linked to a backwater system can significantly impact its socio-economic and cultural…

A common sight in many Indian cities are decrepit or waste-laden canals that were once integral to the local economy. Cities have grappled with the mammoth task of cleaning and restoration of such canals with limited success. Often people who have made a life on the banks and margins become collateral damage to these efforts. Now Alappuzha in Kerala could pave the way for an alternative. The Canalpy Project A model canal-restoration project, Canalpy, is taking shape in the backwaters of Alappuzha. Funded by the Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA), the effort is supported by Cochin University College of…